Open-Source Cities Open-Source Städte

Friday, July 20, 2012, 2 pm–2:15 pm

Lab Team member Carlo Ratti introduces the topic of the day: Open-Source Cities. The notion of an “organic city” is as old as the planning profession itself. A bottom-up building process by citizens instead of grand, top-down urban design has fascinated writers, architects, and urban theoreticians for decades. The recent success of open-source software development has given these ideas new buoyancy. Can we draw lessons from Linux development for urban development? Can we compare the way we deal with land—a scarce resource—to how we deal with ideas?